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cololonial
_: AN AFFECTIVEREADING OF MARCELINO A. FORONDA, JR. 'S "THE AVOCADO TREE"_

Recently, diaspora has been explored by writers. While it may be true that there is an extensive body of work on the departure and re-settlement of her people, what the Philippines has produced are either fictions or biographies, and very little criticism. It can be observed, as a trend, that most Filipino novelists have been writing about the unsettlement of the _Manongs_, or the first wave of Filipino migrants to the United States. Nearly a century has lapsed since the earliest documented works, and diaspora remains to be a social reality (primarily for economic reasons) impressed upon the Filipino people. It is notable that however imminent the displacement-movement is, the migrant 's understanding, and more so the understanding of their fellow countrymen they have left behind, are distorted (i.e. incongruence between expectation and reality). This study will center on the short story situated in the United States between the years 1920 and 1930, "The Avocado Tree," by Marcelino A. Foronda Jr. The displacement of a people, as the story suggests, oftentimes not only high hopes but also ugly feelings. This paper aims to investigate the memory and affect of the characters in the short story. Attention will be given to the memory of the diasporic of their homeland, their affect of the present, both compounded by possibilities of the past and visions of the future.

LOVE AS THE COUNTERCULTURE OF REMEMBRANCE:

"Love is the gift that keeps on _giving_ when people can rely on re-experiencing their intimates ' fundamental sympathy with the project of repetition and recognition, no small feat since the terms of that sympathy are constantly shifting internally just as they are renegotiated in the world." - Lauren Berlant, in _The Female Complaint_

The story begins with an unnamed female character with whose consciousness retells the events that are central to the avocado tree. She is _confronted_



Bibliography: Bell, Duncan, ed. Memory, Trauma and World Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Ben-Ze 'ev, Aaron. The Subtlety of Emotions. Cambridge: MIT, 2001. Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint. London: Duke University Press, 2008. Bhabha, Homi. The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha Jonathan Rutherford. 1990. Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African-American Identity. Connecticut: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Grefalda, Reme-Antonia, Nadine Sarreal and Geejay Arriola. Our Own Voice: Filipinos in the Diaspora Literary/Arts Journal. Manila: The Philippine Women 's University, 2003. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Luisa, Igloria, ed. Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora. Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2003. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. London: Harvard University Press, 2005. Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky and Adam, eds. Frank. Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader. London: Duke University Press, 1995. Valeros-Gruenberg, Estrellita. The De La Salle University Reader: Writings from the Different Regions of the Philippines. Manila: De La Salle University Press, Inc., 2000.

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